exoflare:
Thanks for your help. Do you know what the name of this 11th century heresy was off-hand?
EDIT: this came to mind right after I originally posted the reply. Wouldn’t the Gnostics before them, believing that all matter was completely evil, have probably had some distortion of the Eucharist as well?
I was thinking of Berengarius of Tours I have a good summary of eucharistic errors it should be noted that the belief was so well believed that most non-catholics sects that attempted to rival catholicsim the first thousand years beleived in a eucharitsic theology close to the church. I think the main exception would be the gnostics who had extreme problems with the spiritual entering anywhere that matter once existed.
It was a contradictary worlds for them. Go Ignatius would be talking about gnostics and Ireneiaus would be talking about gnostics it has been strongly suggested Saint John was addressing gnostics in John 6.
From New Advent:
As for the cogency of the argument from tradition, this historical fact is of decided significance, namely, that the dogma of the Real Presence remained, properly speaking, unmolested down to the time of the heretic
Berengarius of Tours (d. 1088), and so could claim even at that time the uninterrupted possession of ten centuries. In the course of the dogma’s history there arose in general three great
Eucharistic controversies, the first of which, begun by Paschasius Radbertus, in the ninth century, scarcely extended beyond the limits of his audience and concerned itself solely with the philosophical question, whether the
Eucharistic Body of Christ is identical with the natural Body He had in Palestine and now has in heaven. Such a numerical identity could well have been denied by
Ratramnus,
Rabanus Maurus,
Ratherius,
Lanfranc, and others, since even nowadays a true, though accidental, distinction between the sacramental and the natural condition of
Christ’s Body must be rigorously maintained. The first occasion for an official procedure on the part of the Church was offered when
Berengarius of Tours, influenced by the writings of
Scotus Eriugena (d. about 884), the first opponent of the Real Presence, rejected both the latter truth and that of Transubstantiation. He repaired, however, the
public scandal he had given by a sincere retractation made in the presence of
Pope Gregory VII at a synod held in Rome in 1079, and died reconciled to the Church. The third and the sharpest controversy was that opened by the Reformation in the sixteenth century, in regard to which it must be remarked that
Luther was the only one among the Reformers who still clung to the old Catholic doctrine, and, though subjecting it to manifold misrepresentations, defended it most tenaciously. He was diametrically opposed by Zwingli of Zurich, who, as was seen above, reduced the
Eucharist to an empty, meaningless symbol. Having gained over to his views such friendly contemporary partisans as Carlstadt, Bucer, and Oecolampadius, he later on secured influential allies in the
Arminians, Mennonites,
Socinians, and
Anglicans, and even today the rationalistic conception of the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper does not differ substantially from that of the Zwinglians.
